Insights into how your competitors are using Facebook can help you better understand your audience on Facebook and how they use Facebook.

In this article, I’ll review 5 different tools that can be used to help you compare your Facebook Page against competitors and identify tactics to help you improve your Facebook marketing.

#1: Compare Your Statistics With AgoraPulse Barometer

AgoraPulse provides a free tool called the AgoraPulse Barometer, which performs an analysis of your Facebook Page and compares it against other companies’ Pages (that also used this tool) that have a similar number of fans.

The Barometer calculates the average percentage for several criteria based on your last 50 posts. The resulting report shows the score for your Page in black compared with the average score in red for other Pages that ran this assessment.

The table gives an assessment of your Page compared to other Pages with a similar fan count.

Information provided in the chart above includes:

Fans Reached. This is the average number of fans who receive your content. Facebook generally shares your content with a small percentage of fans unless you have a very engaged community. The key to increasing this figure is having a community that comments, likes or shares your posts.

Are you familiar with the new Facebook cover photo rules? You are now able to put calls to action and your website or address information in your Facebook cover photo, but there are still text restrictions.

Would you like some inspiration for what your business can do with a cover photo?

Many people have not updated their cover photos to be in compliance.

In this article I’ll tell you what’s changed and show you 9 examples and how you can leverage the new rules to boost your business.

Facebook’s New Rules

As of March 6, Facebook’s rules state that cover photos may not include more than 20% text. But the previous restrictions that were in place were removed (i.e., no calls to action, no websites and no address information).

The maximum 20% text rule also applies to any photo in a Facebook ad as well, so keep that in mind with your next ad campaign.

There was some initial confusion about how the 20% text area was measured, so Facebook came out with a post that clarified how this area was calculated and what was acceptable.

#1: Know Your Voice

Branding is important on social media. Your company should have a “voice” that matches your brand and your company philosophy.

Are you more serious or do you add a little bit of snark in your posts? Do you stick mostly to business or can you be off the wall? Do you like to stir things up or do you remain neutral?

If you are a one-person operation, these decisions may be easy. But if you have multiple employees and possibly multiple people posting to the Facebook Page, you want to have the “voice of the company” communicated clearly to the people who will be managing your Facebook Page.

The voice of the company is important in how comments and community feedback are handled, as well as the day-to-day posting. Consistency in your voice will help your community know what to expect.

Have you decided that it’s time to create a Facebook Page for your business?

Wondering exactly how to get your Page started the right way?

Facebook continues to change and evolve, making it a moving target for people trying to find the correct steps to set up a Page. But never fear—we have all the critical pieces that you need to put in place to start your Facebook Page today.

To set up your Facebook Page, just follow these steps:

#1: Log into Facebook

If you do not have a personal profile set up on Facebook, do that first at www.facebook.com. Even if you don’t want a personal profile, we highly recommend that you create one rather than creating a “business-only” Facebook Page because of the limitations you will encounter (see point #8 for the Business-only Page limitations).

Either login to your personal account, or create a new personal account from Facebook.com.

As a marketer, you know that what can be measured can be managed (and improved). So even if it seems complex, you need to measure your Facebook Page’s performance.

What statistics should you measure on your Facebook Page?

First you’ll want to focus on your Facebook post metrics. These are the only relevant indicators of the performance of your content. The other Facebook data can be misleading or gamed. But it’s very hard to trick individual post metrics.

Here are the six key metrics you need to track to understand your Facebook Page performance, why you need them and where to find them.

#1: Fan Reach

Fan reach simply corresponds to the number of fans of your Page who have seen any given post. This is “organic” reach, which means that it only records the views that occurred directly, and not through an action of a friend of a fan (such as a like, share or comment). The views that result from a friend’s actions are recorded in “viral” views.

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